Susan Sarandon

Susan Abigail Sarandon, born Susan Tomalin on October 4, 1946, in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, is an American actor whose career spans more than five decades. The eldest of nine children born to Lenora Marie Tomalin and Phillip Leslie Tomalin, an advertising executive, television producer, and former nightclub singer, she grew up in a Roman Catholic household that relocated from New York City to the Stephenville community in what is now Edison, New Jersey, when she was four years old. She and her sisters attended Saint Francis Grammar School in Metuchen, graduating in 1960, while her brothers attended Saint Matthews Grammar School in Edison Township. Sarandon went on to Edison High School, where she was inducted into the National Honor Society in 1964 and performed lead roles in school productions, including Lady Precious Stream and My Sister Eileen. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in drama from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., studying under drama coach Gilbert V. Hartke, and graduated in 1968.

Her professional career began in 1968 when she appeared on stage at the Wayside Theatre in Middletown, Virginia, alongside her then-husband Chris Sarandon. She made her film debut in Joe (1970) after accompanying her husband to a casting call, and between 1970 and 1972 she appeared in the soap operas A World Apart, playing Patrice Kahlman, and Search for Tomorrow, playing Sarah Fairbanks. Sarandon made her Broadway debut in 1972 in An Evening with Richard Nixon and..., marking the beginning of a Broadway presence that would extend to 2009. She received Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Actress in a Play in both 1980 and 1983. Her return to Broadway came with the 2009 revival of Exit the King.

Sarandon gained wider recognition through her role in the musical horror film The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975. Her performance in Atlantic City (1980), directed by Louis Malle, earned her first Academy Award nomination. Malle also directed her in Pretty Baby (1978). Her role in The Hunger (1983) was noted as the first mainstream American film to feature a sex scene between two star actresses. She appeared alongside Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Witches of Eastwick (1987), and her performance opposite Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins in Bull Durham (1988) brought her broad commercial recognition.

Throughout the 1990s, Sarandon received four additional Academy Award nominations for Best Actress: for Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and The Client (1994), before winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for Dead Man Walking (1995), in which she played Sister Helen Prejean, a nun who visits a convicted murderer on death row. She also received a British Academy Film Award for her work. Her other film credits include Pretty Baby (1978), Little Women (1994), Stepmom (1998), Enchanted (2007), The Lovely Bones (2009), Cloud Atlas (2012), Tammy (2014), and The Meddler (2015). On television, she appeared in guest roles on Friends in 2001 and Malcolm in the Middle in 2002, and took on starring roles as Doris Duke in the HBO film Bernard and Doris (2008), as an advocate in the HBO film You Don't Know Jack (2010), and as Bette Davis in the FX miniseries Feud (2017). She has also received nominations for seven Emmy Awards and ten Golden Globe Awards across her career.

Beyond her performance work, Sarandon was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1999 and received the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award in 2006. She has contributed narration to approximately two dozen documentary films, many addressing social and political issues, and has served as a presenter on multiple installments of the PBS documentary series Independent Lens.